


Tom Riddle and the Quest for Vulnerability

by lejf



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, Angst and Porn, Bottom Tom Riddle, Dubious Consent, M/M, Top Harry Potter, Young Tom Riddle, a lot of porn, just 6 years, no time travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:07:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23192176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lejf/pseuds/lejf
Summary: They found him in an old house, under the stairs. His face was pale and instantly recognisable.akaAuror Harry Potter has eighteen-year-old Tom Riddle bent over the table barely a day after he becomes his ward.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Minor Hermione/Ron - Relationship
Comments: 83
Kudos: 945





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little tribute to the first pairing I’d ever written something for. Those old ff.net fics of mine were, frankly, awful, but I enjoyed making them, and that’s the important part.
> 
> There's actually a bit of heavy stuff in here, but that's par for the course when it comes to Tom Riddle. Still, you ought to be cautious if entrapment & confinement make you uneasy.

They found him in an old house, under the stairs. 

They were called in because ‘there was a big deal’. Rupert, an old Ministry worker and liaison between the international governments, was smoking and waiting for them when he arrived, surrounded by his workers that were looking rather worried. He said, “Eighty years later and Grindelwald’s still packing a punch stronger than I could dream of.”

“This is Grindelwald’s?” Ron said. Harry looked at the house for a sign of the hallows, Grindelwald’s symbol. 

Rupert said, “We were called in to bulldoze this thing, but we’d rather not risk it if there’s something nasty sleeping in there.”

At his peak, Grindelwald had been incredibly powerful. Lucid and incredibly powerful. Anything that he had created could be deadly. “Okay,” Harry said, and ordered their team to secure the perimeter. The property was small, suburban, squatting in an old part of Germany. “Is there anything else I should know about this place?”

“Concealment charm wore off recently,” Rupert said. “On the documents too. Dated for 1945.”

Half an hour later, Harry gave up and called a German Ministry curse-breaking team to come in. They began to work on unravelling the front door. His own men were at the ready. Rupert’s workers had gone home, but Rupert was still there, just to oversee. 

“How did you know this was Grindelwald's?” Harry asked him.

“The deeds are under your name. That's why we called you.“ Before Harry could say anything, he said, “They were under Grindelwald’s, then Dumbledore’s, then passed to you. Technically this is yours.”

“Clear!” someone yelled, and the front door swung open. “All enchantments and curses to keep something _in_ ,” Harry was briefed as they entered. "We couldn't have opened it otherwise. We should be on our guard.”

Another wizard sent forward a sweeping charm, suffusing the rooms with golden light. They searched the place high and low but found nothing. Dust created a carpet on the floor and then more. Nothing was inside the building. There were no stovetops, no sinks, no bookcases, no singular piece of furniture, even though there was a set of stairs that led into equally, utterly, empty rooms. There were no relics nor weapons being concealed, but a sense of magic hung throughout the place, heavy and bloated. No one could pinpoint where it was, not even Harry. 

Until a shout broke out. “We need Healers! There’s someone in here, under the stairs!” They emerged in a swirl of disturbed dust, holding a boy no older than eighteen, completely bare. His face was pale and instantly recognisable. “He’s under stasis! We need him in a hospital and examination room, stat!” 

Harry rushed outside and tried to breathe. Ron followed him out. 

“Harry, you alright?” Ron said. 

Voldemort had died six years ago. Harry had killed him in Hogwarts for the final time. “I’m hallucinating,” Harry said, frantically, just as they carried the boy out. Suddenly there was this thunderous noise, like millions of trees rustling, magic unfurling, and the house simply unravelled into ash. Everyone turned to look, and for a heart-stopping moment Harry thought that the boy would be gone too, but he wasn’t. In fact, he had started breathing, and his eyes had opened, dark and unseeing. 

*

“It can’t be Tom Riddle,” Hermione said. She had paced the length of the room at least twenty times now. 

“It _might_ be,” Ron said.

“How?” Hermione rounded on him. "Harry destroyed all of his horcruxes. We all _saw_ him die! Even if someone went and fetched him out of time, it wouldn’t make sense to just— put him in an old building!”

“The deed was under Harry’s name," Ron said darkly. “So someone wanted us to find him.“

“That makes even less sense! If they wanted to revive Voldemort, why put him right into the hands of the person who’d killed him last time?”

Harry rubbed at his head. There came a knock on the door, and the two of them fell instantly silent. “Auror Potter and Auror Weasley, sirs, the patient’s woken up.”

Hermione shot him a worried look as he got to his feet. “If he tries to hurt you two…”

“Then we know for sure,” Harry said. The Healers had told him that there were no lingering curses on the boy. The Spell-making department had an entire conniption over the stasis that Riddle had been under and the enchantments attached to him. Apparently they had been legendary. State-of-the-art. And it required a life source to run. The entire house must’ve been bound to him, like a battery. 

Tom Riddle himself looked exactly as Harry recalled and chased away any of his lingering doubts. His face was simply unforgettable, no matter how much time Harry put between them, and it was marred with a small frown. “Hello?” he said, and sounded authoritative despite just waking up from an era of sleep in a hospital bed. “Who are you? Why am I here?” He glanced at the Healer that was monitoring his equipment. 

“Auror Potter and Auror Weasley representing the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. You were found in an abandoned building. What do you remember? Do you have any idea what happened to you or how you got there?”

His expression did not change. "May I talk to somebody else first?”

“Absolutely,” Harry said. “If you give us a name, we’ll do our best to–“

“Dumbledore. Albus Dumbledore.”

Silence filled the room. “I’m afraid he’s dead,” Harry said. 

Riddle did not say anything for a while. He just stared at Harry, and his expression shuttered like someone inside had quietly shut the blinds. Harry felt like a storm had started somewhere in his stomach. “We have reason to believe that you were in stasis for a long time,” Harry said. “What year do you remember it being?“

“I don’t know,” Riddle said, and Harry heard Ron cough lightly in disbelief behind him. Riddle’s eyes narrowed.

“It’s 2004,” Harry said. “Do you have any family or friends who you would like to contact to remain in their care?”

Truth to be told, Harry did not know what he would do if Riddle named a family that was still alive. But Riddle shook his head, so Harry nodded with as much curt professionalism as he could muster. 

“Until you’re reacclimatised, you'll remain as my ward. If you would prefer another figure of authority to-“

“No,” Riddle said, and his original arrogant persona wrapped around him once more, though Harry noticed that he concealed his hands, which might’ve been shaking. “Do you think you could take me out of here yet? I’ve spent enough time in enough cramped rooms.”

After the Healer assured him that Riddle was, indeed, in decent health — stasis notwithstanding, and she mentioned magical malnutrition briefly and left him instructions to eat and rest — Harry left to pick up and fill out the necessary forms for taking in Riddle. He would be back for the boy himself again later. Ron went to fill Hermione in on the details. It occurred to Harry, when sending the paperwork to Robards, that he should find some clothes for Riddle to wear. 

He needn’t have worried, however, because when he returned, apparently someone had already brought him some. Riddle was sitting atop the hospital bed, just looking at the sheets, smoothing them over with his hands occasionally. “Hey,” Harry said, even though he didn’t think that Riddle hadn’t noticed his entrance. “Let’s go.” 

Riddle’s legs were lanky, coltish. It was a bizarre thing to notice, but there was nothing else to do in the elevator than look at him. Harry assumed he was around eighteen. He was much taller than Harry already, but had this look about him that suggested he wasn’t altogether familiar with his adult body. “You never gave us your name,” Harry realised. 

“Tom,” Riddle said. 

“I can call you Tom?” Harry said. His surprise must’ve shown, because Riddle looked at him. 

“Yes,” Tom said, in a tone that suggested he thought Harry was odd. “That’s my name. Of course you may.”

*

Tom did nothing at Harry’s home but sit in the living room. He made no comment on the muggle furniture, nor the humbleness of Harry’s dwellings. He sat there for hours and looked out the window while Harry typed up reports to his superiors. He was a very unobtrusive presence, and he offered to help cook when Harry began making dinner, but Harry insisted that he was a guest. Tom returned to the living room seat, then, and when Harry came over to tell him that supper was ready, he found that Tom had fallen asleep. He slept in an odd way — he put his legs up onto the seat by his chest and buried his face into his knees.

Harry looked at him for a while, unsure what to make of all this, then went upstairs to fetch a blanket to cover him with and continue typing. This was a good time to get all of his procrastinated paperwork done. Tom woke soon after and seated himself at the table to eat. Harry went to reheat the stew he’d made. 

“You haven’t asked me about anything. Aren’t you curious about what’s happened in the years when you were in stasis?” Harry asked.

“I will be, later,” Tom said. 

Harry began to ladle him stew, but Tom insisted on doing it himself. Harry noticed that he ate very little. 

“You didn’t even ask how Dumbledore died.”

“I didn’t need to ask. It was at Grindelwald’s hand, no?” Tom said. Harry stared at him, trying to parse what would possibly make Tom think that. Tom stared right back. He seemed perplexed by Harry’s shock.

“Grindelwald died in 1945,” Harry said slowly. 

“That’s impossible.”

Harry did not want to pressure him, so all he did was shrug. But Tom had diverted all of his focus to Harry now. 

“He couldn’t have died,” Tom repeated. 

“Everything dies eventually.”

“Not everything.” Tom sounded very self-assured, but Harry knew his history inside-out. Tom Riddle had made his first horcrux at sixteen. There was no doubt that this past-Tom had already created one. Presumably this was at the peak of his ambitions, when he was all-loved at Hogwarts, gathering his army, and was achieving what wizards could never dream to achieve. Presumably this was also where the arrogance stemmed from.

“Are you talking about horcruxes?" Harry said. He could feel his own temper stirring. 

He expected Tom to be surprised. Tom raised a cool eyebrow and said, “So horcruxes are common knowledge in this time. Then–“

“I mean _yours_ , Tom,” Harry said. "Yours have all been destroyed.”

Tom said nothing. He had stopped eating. He was staring at his stew with great concentration. 

“What?” he asked, quietly, clearly knowing that he was admitting to having horcruxes. “Was it Slughorn? Dumbledore? How could they– _why_ would they–“

It hit Harry like a ton of bricks. This _was_ eighteen-year-old Tom, one that had no idea what his future self would wreak. But why hadn’t this Tom considered the possibilities? All that ambition, surely it would have struck him that his future self would have– 

“But you’re _lying_ to me,” Tom said, lifting his eyes to meet Harry’s. “I only ever made one horcrux.”

Tom’s eyes were very dark. Then Harry remembered _eye contact_ , Legilimens, the instant his mind exploded with razor blades. On instinct his hands flew up to clasp his scar, but it wasn’t the scar that was on fire, it was his _mind_. Tom was trying to rifle into it, tear through Harry’s mental barriers like a scorching hand. Harry hadn’t been prepared the first time, but on Tom’s second assault, he pulled all his years of training into a cold steel core and _caged_ Tom in. 

“I know this is how you’re used to doing things,” Harry growled. He was going to need to put down some ground rules. Tom was looking at him, his lips tight, eyebrows furrowed into concentration. “But don’t try to read my mind again. I’m not above hurting you if you do.” 

Tom seemed to get over the hurdle of Harry’s Occlumency skills quickly, because he recovered and said, “But it _can’t_ be true. I only made one.” 

“The diary?” Harry asked acerbically. Tom no longer looked surprised whenever Harry revealed knowledge. But already Harry had gauged that Tom was too young, too inexperienced, to be the Dark Lord that he was truly familiar with. “You made _six_ more, Tom. Don’t you remember being obsessed with making seven?” 

Tom frowned. “Prove to me you’re not lying,” he said. 

Harry had a Pensieve upstairs.

*

Tom did not talk much in the aftermath of witnessing glimpses of history. He’d pulled himself from the Pensieve after viewing only four of the Horcruxes being destroyed by Harry and skipping to their final duel at Hogwarts. He barely finished his stew, which had long gone cold, washed his dishes, dried them, and then mechanically returned to the living room chair and stared at the wall. Harry watched him for a while and then returned his own work. By now, the sun had fallen, and crickets had began to chirp outside. Harry sent a detailed message both to Hermione and Ron and then considered going to bed for the evening. 

He massaged his head. He should have expected the attempted Legilimency. It was his own mistake for being off-guard. He got up from his laptop, stretched, and went to check on Tom. Tom was lightly dozing and both had his legs pulled up to his chest and blanket up to his chin, but he opened his eyes when Harry approached. 

“I can show you the guest bedroom," Harry said. 

Tom’s dark eyes caught what little light there was. Glistening sclera. “You killed me,” he said.

Harry’s wand was in his back pocket. Tom didn’t even have a wand. Tom was eighteen. Harry was twenty-four, and had killed him multiple times already. He was not afraid. 

“What are your intentions with me now? Are you going to kill me again?”

Harry said, “I was planning to send you back in time.”

“I thought so,” Tom said. He looked up at Harry. 

Suddenly, Harry, with a gut-sickening lurch, felt a flare of arousal simply because Tom Riddle was looking up at him. Nothing in his eyes even implied eroticism. Harry simply hadn’t slept with anyone in a long time. The low standard of a handsome boy looking up at him got him going. It faded within a second. 

“But I’m not out of time,” Tom said, knowing nothing of Harry’s momentary lapse of all reason. “Grindelwald caught me when I was sixteen. I cast the stasis on myself.”

“What?” Harry said. 

Somewhere inside, dreadfully, it began to come together.

“There was no time turner. There was no ritual. I was there _the whole time_ ,” Tom said. “All sixty-one years.”

“But you were in Hogwarts. Voldemort was active in that time.”

Tom tilted his head and regarded him.

“Unless—“ Harry said. “That was another part of you– another part of your _soul_ – the horcruxes-“

“You know how a Horcrux is made, don’t you? You start with a murder to split your soul. But there’s more than one way to split someone's soul. _Brute force_.”

Suddenly, sixteen seemed very, very, young. 

Tom’s soul had been split. Supposedly it must have already been fractured after he’d made his first horcrux so it was easier to break. But— “Grindelwald split your soul again,” Harry said. “Why?” To let it roam the world in an identical body so that Tom’s capture would go unnoticed? Grindelwald had been powerful enough to raise the dead. Harry wouldn't be surprised if he managed to create a body for Tom's soul to roam in. No wonder Voldemort had become so deformed at the end. The body had been wholly unnatural.

Tom said, expressionless, “To make room for his own. That’s why Grindelwald can’t be dead, you see. I’m his horcrux.” 

*

Harry could not sleep that night. He updated his friends once more and began to seriously consider bringing the situation to greater authorities, but there was no one who was as familiar with Tom Riddle’s past as him. Harry was the best candidate — safety-wise, and mentality-wise — to handle him. The fact remained, however, that Tom housed a part of _Grindelwald’s soul_. It was the matter of not one, but two of the deadliest Dark wizards of all time and that both were somehow still alive. In a fashion. 

Harry paced, and paced some more. If his memory of the functionality of horcruxes was correct, after death, the spirit remained tethered to the mortal plane, and would slowly, slowly grow in power, possessing small creatures. Voldemort had gained a jumpstart at the time because Quirrell and Nagini had found him. This meant that Grindelwald was probably drifting around somewhere. _Sixty-one_ years. 

There was still too much beyond that to think about. Tom had been in that house for a long time. The house had been so small, so _empty_ , and he’d cast the stasis on _himself_. It must’ve been wandless magic. If he’d this was his soul split after his first horcrux — if the Voldemort that the world had so feared was only a _part_ of his soul, Tom’s power was incomprehensible.

Harry sat up from bed abruptly. He got into his slippers and left his bedroom, which was heavily warded already, but he would want Hermione to come in tomorrow to add an extra ring. The stairs creaked as he came down them, and as he reached the guest bedroom and looked inside, he found that Tom was no longer in the bed. His insides froze to stone. He forced himself to calm down and think. Tom didn’t have a wand yet. He’d just woken up from a long stasis. He’d been sleeping all afternoon. There was no way he had regained enough power to escape Harry’s house without alerting any of the wards. The wards around Harry’s property were nigh impenetrable. 

Harry stood at the base of the stairs, thinking about the way Tom had slept all afternoon. Then he stopped breathing altogether. He had a cupboard under his stairs. He’d found it awful when he first moved in and never put anything in there because all he could remember were the Dursley’s.

When he found Tom in the cupboard, curled up so he could fit, asleep — and it was absurd, really. Tom was much too big to fit in there, so much taller than Harry, and he looked so terribly uncomfortable. How could he possibly _sleep_ like that—

Harry had to bite his own fist to stop himself from making a noise in the sudden maelstrom of unnamable, unfathomable emotion inside him. 

*

Harry asked Tom over breakfast how Grindelwald had caught him. Tom said that he didn’t eat breakfast. Harry had forced toast onto his plate anyway, and now Tom was bound by politeness to finish it, or something else. Harry suspected that, like in his own youth, Tom could not bring himself to waste food. 

“I was sent back to the orphanage every summer,” Tom said. “Dumbledore must have mentioned me — my probing into the Dark arts, my skills — to Grindelwald. He took me during a bomb raid. Mrs Cole would’ve just assumed that I died, and if I came back later, she would’ve assumed that I’d gone to a further shelter or been injured.”

No matter how he tried, Harry could not find his appetite. “That was why you wanted to find Dumbledore as soon as you woke up? Revenge?”

“He’s dead,” Tom said. 

“You didn’t answer the question."

“It really doesn’t matter,” Tom said. 

“It does,” Harry said shortly. “Because if you go murdering and hurting people, I’m going to kill you again.”

“Human beings have all form of coping mechanisms,” Tom said, with just a lick of anger. “Love is one. Hate is another. I find myself much more amenable to hate, as I’m sure you’re well aware. I clung onto hate to maintain me for _two years_ before I cast a stasis on myself. Being robbed of a coping mechanism is no easy thing.“

He stabbed his toast with a fork, then ate a large bite out of it. Harry watched him eat. 

“Do you want some tea?” Harry asked.

“Forget the damn tea.”

Harry went to put on the kettle to calm himself down. “I don’t know what to do with you,” he said. “You should be charged and trialled for the murder of Myrtle and involvement in illicit Dark arts.”

Tom glowered at the table. Harry poured him some tea. At least Tom was much more open than yesterday. It seemed that, after admitting the truth about the house, he was more argumentative. Perhaps he was trying to provoke a rise out of Harry. 

“Stop trying to feed me.”

“It’s just tea,” Harry said, and poured himself a cup too. Tom watched him do it. Harry made himself tea nearly every morning. He’d made the switch from coffee a few years ago. It was simply something, he assumed, that happened as one aged. 

However, there _was_ something deeply pleasing about forcing Tom into doing things that were good for him that he reluctantly accepted. Harry did not know how to begin inspecting that urge. 

“Do you really believe in the justice system so strongly?” Tom said. 

“Yes,” Harry said, very calmly. 

For a moment Tom’s hand clenched around his knife. Then, slowly, it relaxed. “I guess it doesn’t matter,” Tom said. 

They finished the rest of their meal in silence. Since it was a weekend, Harry prepared to do the chores. He filled a bucket up with soapy water and fetched the mop. Tom did not question him. He’d just washed up on his own dishes and then lingered near Harry, in the kitchen, then the living room. Harry vacuumed the carpeted areas, such as the stairs and the guest bedroom. He used a cloth to wipe dust off the shelves. At one point Harry asked Tom if he wanted to help because Tom kept lingering in the periphery, and Tom said yes, so Harry had him clean the stovetops and the oven grates. 

At noon, when they were preparing lunch (a potato salad, along with bread rolls), a knock came on the door. Harry had been expecting Ron and Hermione, so he invited them in. Ron sent a perplexed look at the Dark Lord chopping potatoes. 

“We’re going to have to file a Ministry report so we can pull resources to start a search for Grindelwald,” Hermione said briskly, opening her laptop.She wasn’t an Auror; she was the Deputy Head of Magical Law Enforcement and had ties all throughout the Ministry’s sectors, such as the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes and the Department of International Cooperation. She was much more administratively capable than they were.

Tom glanced at them and asked Harry if it were alright to leave the rest of lunch preparation to him. Harry said that it was fine, so Tom retreated to the guest room to give them the illusion of privacy.

“I want to keep a lid on the horcrux situation,” Harry said. 

“Absolutely not.”

“At least the _identity_ of the horcrux."

Hermione shot him a sharp look, then relented and began to type. “As long as we can authorise it under your name. They’ll just assume that you came to it when you were going through Dumbledore’s things, which… isn’t far from the truth, I suppose. But they’ll be expecting you to have destroyed the horcrux.”

“I know,” Harry said. “I’ll figure it out.”

*

Some time later, Harry had Hermione up in his room, re-working his wards. He’d asked Ron to deliver lunch to Tom and check in on him, which Ron had grumbled but reluctantly accepted now that most of the discussion with the logistics was done. Hermione visibly relaxed once she crossed the threshold of his bedroom’s wards.

“Are you sure it’s safe to leave Ron down there?” she asked. 

“The most he did was Legilimens me," Harry said. “Ron would be able to fight it off for long enough for us to get downstairs, but I think Tom’s smart enough to know that the consequences would be fatal anyway.”

“Harry,” she said, frowning. 

“I know,” he said. “I feel bad for him, but not bad enough not to kill him. I wouldn’t send him to Azkaban. Instead I could deal with both birds with one stone. I’d destroy both the Horcrux and Voldemort.” 

“They certainly wouldn’t be able to hold him at Azkaban,” Hermione agreed faintly. She scanned his wards up and down, then sighed and consulted some of the books she’d brought for this very reason. 

“I think he’s in shock,” Harry said. 

“Shock?” Hermione said. “I’m not sure it's shock.” She had been turning a page. 

“Not shock, sorry. I think there’s some sort of…” He rubbed at his head. This last day had been frustrating. “Well, last night when I went to check on him he was sleeping in the cupboard beneath the stairs, for God’s sake.”

Hermione stopped and looked at him with a terribly concerned expression. “I’m really sorry, Harry. That had to have been upsetting for you.”

“It wasn’t really– it’s different.” Harry said. “Don’t worry about me.”

“If what he said was true, he was practically in solitary confinement for two years before he put himself under stasis,” Hermione said. “Did you know that a lot of people in extended solitary confinement go mad? There’ve been a lot of Muggle studies on that sort of sensory deprivation. Anxiety, panic, aggression, depression, and that’s not even starting on the physical damage. And worst of all, he’s _young_. It’s particularly damaging to juveniles because they’re developing.”

She turned around after he hadn't answered for some time to see him sunken into his chair. “On one hand I’m willing to kill him,” Harry said, exhausted, “and on the other– he was _sixteen_. ‘Mione, when we were sixteen…”

She looked awfully sad.

Suddenly overcome by terrible emotion, Harry said, “We were solving mysteries. We went to Hogsmeade and ate sweets. I had a Firebolt and I was playing Quidditch every weekend and getting to _fly_ while he was in an empty room for _two years_. How can I think about that, Hermione? I just can’t."

"I'm sorry, Harry," Hermione said. "I'd tell you that you could try to focus on the other parts, but I know you won't. You're like that."

*

The couple offered to stay the night, but Harry declined, and soon after they left, Tom emerged. All he did was clamber onto the living room seat — it was huge, plush, personally Harry’s favourite — and sink in and close his eyes. He looked exhausted. 

Harry looked inside the guest room to find that Tom hadn’t finished his salad. So Harry took it outside and put it next to his armchair and went to clean up everything else. He scrubbed the plates clean and then went to take the laundry out. He’d put his things into the washing machine earlier in the day. He’d need to get Tom more clothes at some point, he realised. Harry’s wouldn’t fit him.

When he came back indoors, Tom was watching him. “Why do you do all your chores by hand?” he asked. “You’re wasting your life.”

“I’m not in a rush to do anything,” Harry said. 

“You could be furthering your occupation as an Auror. You could be developing a hobby. You could be reading, drawing, learning an instrument, acquiring a new language—"

“But would any of those really make me any happier?” Harry said. “I’m content as things are now. I’m content just to _be_.”

“You sound like Dumbledore.”

“Do _you_ still have ambitions?" Harry said. He settled down into the seat opposite Tom and fixed him with a very level stare. “Is getting an Outstanding in all of your subjects still appealing? Or having a professor think that you’re so charming and clever? Or having people treat you like some sort of hero? Sometimes all those things fall away, Tom, and you’re happy enough with yourself to let yourself drift with the current.”

Tom gave a small snort of derision. "'Happy with myself’? Do you hear what delusion you’re spouting?”

Harry stood. Tom looked up at him again, a spark of defiance in his expression, and Harry felt that throb of pulse of entirely misplaced arousal. Whenever Tom looked up at him he just– he wanted–

Tom must've seen it in his expression, but he didn't smirk. Instead, he inhaled sharply as though shocked and parted his legs, just the slightest.

“Come on,” Harry said instead, tearing his gaze away. Do _not. Do not._ “I’m going to take you somewhere.”

*

Tom did not say much on their journey there, considering all Harry did was walk them outside the anti-Apparating wards, grab Tom’s arm, and vanish with a _crack!_

Upon landing on a paved road, Tom tried to rip his arm away from Harry, but Harry kept an iron-clad hold on him. “Tom,” Harry said impatiently. They were in public. “ _Behave_.”

For some reason that made Tom still, although Harry could sense a silent tension in him. It was so unexpected that Harry jerked around to look at him. Tom was blushing, just the slightest, high on his cheekbones. Harry thought for a moment he was hallucinating.

“No one orders _me_ ,” Tom snarled, though the effect was somewhat diminished by the blush creeping up his ears. “You don’t have that sort of power.“

Harry glanced around. They were on a busy street. He’d taken them into the Magical shopping districts of London, but there were plenty of alleys that would serve him well. When he was looking, Tom jerked out of his grip and took off. With a _crack_ Tom Disapparated, _wandlessly_. The _fucker._ Pity was the furtherest thing from Harry's mind right then. Tom _manipulated_ pity. Harry, blood running so high and fast through his chest because this was beyond idiotic and utterly crazy for him to be allowing to happen, heart pounding at the thought of catching Tom Riddle, handsomer than he had any right to be, grabbed those threads of magic, _felt_ their frequency, and Apparated instantly to follow. 

He practically crashed into Tom; he had landed were somewhere in the wilderness (Albania, he recognised, somewhere deep in his bones) and seized him not just around the arm but by the shoulders and — while Tom was taller, he was just an eighteen-year-old orphan that’d grown up in the dregs of the Great Depression and the jaws of World War Two whereas Harry was a twenty-four-year-old Auror in his prime at peak magical and physical health — Apparated again, dragging Tom with him to _slam_ him against an alley wall that rocked all the air out of Tom’s lungs. 

Harry, half red-hot furious that Tom had tried to escape and half coldly calculated that he’d _let_ Tom go, power laced into his tone reminiscent of the dragon he’d freed from Gringotts, bellowed, “ _DOWN_.” Tom dropped to his knees so fast that his legs might as well have been cut. 

Harry grabbed Tom’s face, curling his fingers under Tom’s jaw. “I told you to _behave_.”

Tom’s breath was coming fast. “I was quite well-mannered,” he said.

“I was going to get you something nice here, but I changed my mind.” 

Tom just stared up at him, lips parted because he was panting so loudly. He was panting because he was so desperately aroused and his eyes wide and fixed on Harry. He grabbed Harry’s legs tightly. 

Harry was straining the front of his pants but he was _not_ – he was absolutely _not_ going to tell Tom to something so vulgar as suck his cock here in a London alley. 

Harry didn’t make a move, didn’t tell Tom to stop as he slowly slid his knee between Harry’s feet and — Harry wondered briefly if he'd lost his mind — but, unmistakably, began rutting up against his leg. It was hard to believe that he would be a Prefect and Head Boy, let alone a Dark Lord, when he was so flushed red and he looked so young and his panting had turned into small throat-noises that anyone else would describe as whimpers. 

A voice much like Hermione’s was screaming with meek terror in Harry’s head. 

Tom thrust forward, his hand clutching up higher on Harry’s thigh, closer, and Harry’s dick jumped at the touch, and he couldn’t hold back the race of his heart, his own laboured breathing when Tom struck up a rhythm humping Harry’s leg and his eyelids fluttered with the sensation. Harry could _feel_ Tom’s erection, impossibly hard, pressed up and sliding against his calf. Harry didn’t do anything. He just watched, his grip on Tom’s face loosening, completely enthralled as Tom came to a peak. He buried his nose in the front of Harry’s trousers and Harry couldn’t help but buck forward, and Tom latched onto—

Harry’s _pocket_ , his _wand_ , Tom's hand, searching for it— and he could almost laugh at the hysterical notion of the double-entendre–

He _flung_ Tom’s wrists off with magic and then grabbed him with his bigger rougher callused hands and threw Tom back, pinned him against the ground as Tom whined loudly and thrashed because he was coming in his pants like a touch-starved, inexperienced teenager, his mouth open and gasping and wet and just asking to be violated. 

Harry’s head screamed a mantra that repeated something like ‘do _not_ pull down your pants and jerk yourself off so you can come all over Tom Riddle’s face, do _not_ , even though you want to mark his slandering cursing mouth and have it caught his fucking eyelashes and in his coiffed fucking hair–’

The Hermione-like voice in his head had risen to full-blown horror, at this point. 

*

Tom had gone to sleep almost immediately after the incident. Harry had Apparated them back to his home and put him to bed and then sat on the edge of the bed and stared at his hands and his erection in dismay. He’d had a traumatised Tom Riddle in his house for just over _one day_ and had immediately engaged in sexual relations with him. Harry had to transfer him away immediately. But that was dangerous because Tom was uncontrollable, would escape, and likely devolve into his old ways. Harry needed Hermione and Ron or _someone_ to live with him to keep his impulses under control. 

Harry _did_ tend to get a bit rough in the sack, but the last he remembered, that was years ago with Ginny, and maybe the occasional tryst with a wizard or witch or both. But he was The Boy Who Lived. He had a reputation. And he’d just let the young Dark Lord hump his leg until he came, for fuck’s sake. He hadn’t known— he hadn’t realised just how much it turned him on when he had someone to debauch. The more prim, the more proper, the more fiery, the more untouchable, the _better_. 

“Oh my god,” Harry whispered. “I’m depraved.”

He looked at Tom, sleeping, looking positively innocent, his hair now mussed, a streak of dirt on his ear, and immediately felt his dick pulse in his trousers. He hadn't come earlier.

Harry got up. He went to the kitchen to shakily pour himself some water and stare into his front garden for a while, trying to collect himself. Tom Riddle had just suffered from some form of solitary confinement and sensory deprivation for two years. He had woken up in the future, completely untethered. Any individuals that he could’ve sought revenge on (Grindelwald, Dumbledore) had already passed away. He could not return to the system without being discovered as a younger form of the previous Dark Lord. He would’ve been in emotional turmoil. Harry, the one responsible for re-acclimatising him, or killing him, had just suffered from a major brain aneurysm and replaced his logical faculties with libido instead. 

An owl tapped at the window. It was carrying a manila envelope. Harry opened the window, thanked the owl, paid it a knut from a pot that he kept by the window, and took the envelope. It was from the Ministry. Harry’s gut sank. It was impossible, but his immediate thought was that somehow, someone must’ve found out. 

He sat down at the living room table and opened the file. It was from St. Mungo’s. It was the detailed report of Tom’s state after they examined him. 

Harry stared at it for a long time, then put it away upstairs, quietly.

*

Harry, unfortunately, did not stop fucking Tom Riddle. In fact, he made it notably worse, because as soon as Tom emerged from the guest bedroom, Tom asked, “What were you trying to buy for me in the first place?”

“A pet snake,” Harry said. 

Tom looked genuinely surprised by that, as though he’d never thought about it. He didn’t know how to make himself happy, Harry had realised, earlier. 

“What would’ve given you inspiration for _that?_ ” 

His hair was wet. He must’ve taken a shower. Harry hadn’t bought him clothes. He was wearing the same shirt and trousers from earlier, but he soiled his underwear because he'd come in them. So he must not be wearing any now. Harry tried not to think about that and failed. 

“Voldemort’s snake,” Harry said. "You saw her briefly in the Pensieve. Nagini.”

“Nagini?” Tom said. His tone clearly displayed recognition. Harry hadn’t realised that Tom knew of her so early. “You thought a simple _garden-variety_ snake would be able to replace Nagini?”

“You liked talking to snakes when you were younger,” Harry said, and dismissed the clear invitation for an argument. 

Tom stood at the head of the table, at a loss, before he sat in one of the chairs. 

“Besides, I was going to pick up a Horned Serpent egg, not a _garden variety snake_.” He looked over at Tom, who was looking at Harry’s hair, which must’ve been a mess. 

“Is Nagini alive?”

“No,” Harry said. “You made her into one of your horcruxes, so she died.”

“Are you accusing me of her death?” Tom shot back, temper suddenly flaring. 

“It’s fact. She died because she was your horcrux. She wouldn't have been a target otherwise.”

“She _lived_ because of me.”

Harry looked at him and didn’t meet his anger. Harry wasn’t in the mood to be angry. He was still thinking about the file he’d read earlier. 

“I met her at Hogwarts,” Tom barrelled on. “She was a Maledictus and I’d just happened to run into her, and when she realised I was a Parseltongue, that when the blood curse stopped being controllable, _I_ would be the last to ever understand her or talk to her. To her, I would be the last human left in the world. If she didn’t have that, she told me, she would simply kill herself before the blood-curse completed.”

He was trying to get a reaction out of Harry. Desperate, even. Harry realised suddenly that Tom must’ve felt rather bereft. Harry had witnessed him very vulnerable earlier and then had not acknowledged it. It could've seemed like abandonment. It must’ve been unsettling Tom. 

“All those years trapped alone would've been very hard,” Harry said. Even if he'd meant Nagini trapped in snake form, he knew how Tom would interpret it. As _him._

Tom’s expression immediately shut down. He stood from his chair and tried to return to the guest room, except Harry wordlessly lassoed him with magic and yanked him back across the table. 

A series of spells erupted soundlessly and harmlessly in the shields that Harry Conjured around them. Tom made to rise, except Harry was already above him, pinning him down. 

“I _see_ you baiting for a fight," Harry said. “You beg for me to make you vulnerable and hold you down, but try to run as soon as we start _talking_ about vulnerabilities. Do you not know how to open up unless it’s for sex?”

Tom opened his mouth and then said nothing. His eyes were so wide. His breath was coming fast and Harry could already feel Tom’s erection pressing up against his leg. “Or do you just have a thing for how much _stronger_ I am than you?” Harry demanded. “I bet you’ve never experienced that, have you?”

There _were_ wizards, two dead ones, that had been stronger than Tom, though, Harry thought uncomfortably. He didn’t know what was different. Maybe he’d get Tom to tell him, in time.

The hips beneath his bucked. Harry ground them down and watched as Tom’s head fell back. 

“You’re going to turn over,” Harry said. 

Instantly Tom resisted — and now the resistance wasn’t just for show, lights exploded around them, Tom’s legs lashed out, hissing curses from between his teeth. Harry deflected them and tried to control the damage to his house at the same time, except Tom was writhing, trying to plant his hand in Harry’s face to erupt some sort of flame curse. But Harry had defeated the Dark Lord every year of his life. He was not going to be stopped by one _troublesome child_. 

Harry locked Tom’s legs, then his arms, and bit the back of his fucking neck, viciously hard, and instead of the next curse, Tom cried out and rutted back against Harry, who was hard as all depravity against Tom’s backside. Somehow the bite turned into apologetic sucking and kissing, but somehow Tom was still moaning and twitching every time Harry bit and was enjoying himself too much to keep up the pretense of fighting anymore. 

Tom’s trousers were yanked down — he really wasn’t wearing underwear — and, with a quick charm that he used usually when he was jacking off to wet his hand, Harry drove his fingers into Tom with no other warning. A lightbulb erupted in the next room; Tom’s face was pressed against the tabletop, his vulgar mouth gasping for air, pretty face flushed because Harry was fucking his perfectly round arse with two long fingers. Harry drove them in hard, watching the way his arse bounced each time Harry’s palm struck it because he was sinking in every last inch of his fingers. And Tom was so _loud_ , his voice an octave higher and breathier than usual, crying out and moaning. 

Then Harry yanked up the back of his shirt and grabbed the back of Tom’s neck with his other hand, stilled all motion, and snarled, “How did you get all these scars?” Because Tom’s back was littered with scars, all over, neat and striped and methodical, just as described in the report he had received by owl earlier. “Who did this to you? Grindelwald?!”

Tom tried to rock back on Harry's now-unmoving fingers, but Harry pressed harder on his neck and then leaned in and bit, _hard_.

“Fuck!” Tom yelled.

“ _Tell me!_ ” 

“ _I_ did it,” Tom gasped, “I did— the enchantments on the house were all tied to me — I thought— if I died or weakened myself enough I would be able to get out— but it never worked — the Horcrux didn’t let me—“

Harry drove his hand back in with a furious, hammering rhythm that he knew was pounding Tom’s prostate. 

Tom cried out again, and then came all over Harry’s table. 

Harry did not stop fucking him then. In fact, Harry kept on going until Tom got hard a second time and began begging until Harry put just the tip of his cock into the tight squeeze of Tom’s entrance and jacked himself off until he came harder than he’d ever before, completely bowled over by his orgasm, filling Tom with his come and wanting nothing more than to put his fucking seed into this young terrible wizard forever and ever, have Tom dripping with his come while he tried to be so arrogant and bold and beautiful in front of other people. 

And afterwards, immediately, felt savage and guilty as all hell.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the ship name’s Ham

Harry, walking through the Ministry, couldn’t stop thinking about Tom’s pert arse clinging to his cock. He’d only sunk in the very tip. Except that was a much too mundane way to put it. With vivid clarity, Harry’s memory provided him how the rim, shiny-wet with lube from his fingers, had given into the pressure and let the fat head of Harry’s cock in. It was doubtful that Tom had had any prior male partners — he would’ve wanted to avoid that scandal while he was building his reputation at Hogwarts — and that made Harry burn even hotter. He’d been the one to put his dick inside that virgin arse, and not just that. He’d filled him with warm come, _marked_ him. 

His was hard under his robes. Harry stopped into his office to regain his composure, but ended up locking the door and jacking off, thinking about the noises that Tom made and the feeling of his body tensing when Harry had put his dick inside him for the first time. 

Oh, Merlin. The worst part was that Harry was going to do it again, and had the suspicion that he would continue for as long as Tom kept panting for it. 

He came, scourgifyed it, and instantly felt chagrined. He was supposed to be here on a proper errand. He sat back and tried to collect himself. He looked at the ceiling, but, drawn by gravity, found his gaze lowering to the photo frame he kept propped on his desk. 

Nausea swamped him. Lily and James Potter smiled back from their moment preserved in time. 

Harry tore his eyes away. He covered his mouth. His parents had loved him more than anything. His mother had _died_ for him, her love so powerful that the greatest Dark Lord could not defeat it, and Harry disgraced her memory and sacrifice by lusting after this same Dark Lord. 

They were not the same Voldemort. Harry tried to reason this to himself. He was more similar to his diary form. But would two years of isolation really cause such a great rift between the Tom of then and the Tom of now? He was either a traumatised teenager or the Dark Lord who had slew Harry’s friends and family, on a sliding scale. 

Harry silently gathered himself and left his office.

*

When he returned home, he was exhausted. Ron had come with him to see Robards and they’d discussed Hermione’s full report on the severity that was Grindelwald’s continued existence. The fact that Tom was a horcrux had been easy to convince Robards of. The report had described Tom as an average wizard. Only if he’d possessed a portion of Grindelwald’s soul would he have been able to sustain the magical power necessary to hold the house and create such a complex stasis. Robards had raised concern about the safety of the boy. Harry assured him that it was fine, that Harry was the most well-versed in human horcruxes and Robards’ eyes had gone soft understanding. He’d said that he would let the remaining Spell-making department, as well as the Forensics department, examine the original location of the building and send their reports to him. Harry had also requested some downtime to look after his ward — Ron was more than capable of leading their Auror team — and Robards had readily granted him some.

It was well into the evening; Harry turned on the kitchen lights when he came in. Tom was asleep in the armchair as usual, but woke the sound of Harry coming down the stairs after he’d changed out of his Auror robes. 

“You sleep a lot,” Harry commented. "Is your magic still not back to you yet?”

Tom looked up at him before collecting himself. His expression was harrowed. 

Harry briefly considered asking about nightmares, but decided that Tom’s pride would prevent him from answering. “I’m very drained,” Tom said. 

“What did you eat in those two years, anyway?” Harry said, taking out one of his pots. He’d make pasta today. He had enough ingredients left over. 

“My magic,” Tom said. 

“I didn’t know that was possible."

“You learn a great deal in two years." 

Harry’s mind flickered through the possibilities. Then he thought about what he’d learnt in two years at Hogwarts. The Triwizard Tournament had felt like so much even though it’d barely been half a year. The Horcrux hunt had only lasted a year, too. 

“I didn’t Conjure food,” Tom said, "My body simply… powered itself, while I grew weaker.”

“Not weak enough to stop casting that stasis on yourself. The Spell-makers at the Ministry are really impressed by that piece of spellwork. I think they want to adapt it for Healers to work on high-risk patients.”

“I wouldn’t recommend that,” Tom said, and something in his tone made Harry pause. Tom glanced up at him, and added, “It takes delicate power.”

Harry just shrugged and set a timer for the boiling pasta. “So you practiced your magic in those two years?”

“Of course.”

“You must be awful at Transfiguration, then,” Harry mused, wondering if it was inappropriate to say such a thing. There had been nothing in that house to Transfigure at all, unless there was much to create out of dust. 

“I’m adept at _every_ type of magic," Tom said, resentfully. “I still practised Transfiguration by using any non-essential and removable parts of my body. Hair, toenails, teeth, skin, _blood_.”

He didn’t think that Tom was trying to curry his pity. Harry had been the one that’d brought it up. And, when Harry looked over, Tom looked vaguely uncomfortable, as though he had given away more than he’d intended to. 

Harry said nothing. Instead, he imagined it: Tom Riddle, peeling away the skin on his back, collecting his blood and his body parts, at once trying to maim himself sufficiently to escape, at once trying to gather materials to provide any form of fuel to his magic. 

Sliding scale. 

But, realistically, Tom could be both, at once. 

“Here,” Harry said. “Come watch the sauce for me.”

“ _Watch_ the sauce?” Tom asked.

When Harry had finished straining the pasta, he looked over at Tom watching the pan with rapt focus, and he nearly laughed. He didn’t, whoever, because that would’ve spooked Tom, and Harry preferred it this way. 

*

Clothes were beginning to become a necessity. “No Apparating,” Harry said one evening. “You know I can follow you if you do.”

He’d cast an engorging charm on some of his clothes, which was what Tom was currently wearing. But Harry hadn’t possessed a large wardrobe in the first place, and he was steadily running out of things to wear. The most pressing issue, however, was that Harry was extraordinarily fond of jeans, and Tom in jeans was simply— a crime. Without robes to cloak them, his legs were slim and strangely hypnotic. There was an element of the general elegant crane-like grace that tall willowy people had but also a knock-kneed sort of wet-in-the-backseat attractiveness. 

“Would it result in a repeat performance of last time?”

They hadn’t had sex since the table incident. Harry’s internal agony was too debilitating, but he could _feel_ his self-control beginning so slip. 

“No. I’ll just send you back here and buy things on my own.”

“Good,” Tom said, and strode towards the door with the impression of someone who didn’t think it was good at all. 

“I thought you were supposed to be a very talented liar,” Harry said. “But you–“

“That’s due to my passive _Legilimency_ usually providing me an edge,” Tom said. “Moreover, I haven’t precisely had the most human interaction in the last _decade_ to hone my skills of deception against a man more well-versed in my past than I am.”

Harry hadn’t expected such an answer. "I'm flattered,” he said. 

“You’re not flattered; you’re infuriating,” Tom said, as they stepped outside and Harry Apparated them. 

They landed not in Diagon Alley, but a different Magical shopping district. Harry would rather Tom be unfamiliar with the surroundings. The buildings were tall and lush. Displays glittered from every street. Some of these places were really too expensive for Harry’s taste, but he knew where the good-quality, practical things were. “Come on,” Harry said, while Tom looked around. 

Wizards and witches and even the occasional house-elf or goblin passed by. Tom watched them all with guarded suspicion. Harry kept a very close eye on him, in case he slipped away, although he thought that it would’ve been difficult. Harry had spent a great part of his life watching out for the Dark Lord, and Tom had a very magnetic presence — although perhaps this was only in Harry’s eyes, because no one else spared Tom much of a glance. 

Harry, however, was stopped not too few times. Co-workers at the Ministry, spouses and relatives of other Aurors, old classmates, and others that he’d met through oddly specific things, such as turning up to the pub every weekend to watch the Quidditch games.

“How do you know her?” Tom asked, when they’d finally reached the store Harry had been looking for and Harry had just smiled at an elderly witch.

“She runs the tea shop and florist's in Hogsmeade.”

Tom’s eyes narrowed. “How _are_ you familiar with all these people? Surely you’ve been busy with your occupation.”

“Just around the place. Leonard — short guy from earlier — I saved from a possessed building, so sometimes I meet people on the job, too.”

Tom continued to watch him as though he was a particularly interesting specimen as they entered the dress shirts aisle. A shop assistant materialised. “Oh, Harry!” she said. “Good to see you here. You buyin’ clothes for the lad?” 

“That’s right,” Harry said warmly. "His name’s Tom. Treat him for me, will you?” 

In a moment, Tom was whisked away. Harry watched them make their way through the store, Tom murmuring things here and there, appraising the outfits available while the items they’d picked out hovered behind them. 

He supposed that it must’ve been unsual to Tom. For all that he knew what other students in Hogwarts wanted, they were _students_. Up until sixteen, children were still forming their wavering lines of morality, discerning their social standing, and creating nonsensical standards for popularity between themselves. Hogwarts was a world on its own, with cliques, grades, houses, and very specific rules. At this age, Tom didn’t have experience in the wider world where lives intersected at tangents — a singular point of connection: a club, an occupation, a location, a mutual acquaintance — rather than planes. Tom had learned to manipulate the structure, but beyond Hogwarts, that structure simply _did not exist_.

More importantly, the world was different now. Did Tom think that the name ‘Harry’ was too mundane to deserve recognition? Did Tom think that Harry was too much of a half-blood to have the respect of others? Tom had grown up with a certain frame of axioms. And, Harry realised, he was intending to to break them — whether by bending or by force. 

While Tom was occupied, then, Harry had some purchases to make. 

*

Tom was handsome. This was well-established. Ginny had been so charmed by his diary. Hermione had harboured an intellectual crush before they’d even discovered his identity. Helga had given him her cup. And this was, Harry was sure, only the start of a very long list. 

There was a very stereotypical image of attractive young villains: brooding, thin lips, high cheekbones, defined nose, and slanted eyes shadowed darker than smudged coal. Everything, the jaw, the eye, the nose, was wickedly sharp and swept to a smouldering point. 

Except Tom was not that; Tom had that sort of generically handsome face that an ideal Head Boy would have, where, in isolation, his round eyes were remarkable but nothing to write home about, his nose was quite normal, his hair was nice, and his eyebrows rather decent— but that, when in conjunction, somehow formed a face that contained the best features of every man on the street. He had a simple sort of guileless charm to him, characterised by his eyebrows that were immaculate but not so angular, eyes that were almost-completely symmetrical, and a straight, round-tipped nose. His jaw still had lingering softness to it that age promised to contour into aristocracy. 

But Harry found that this most entrancing quality was the slightest definition to his cheekbones that made it obvious when he set his jaw. He could not take his eyes off the play of skin and muscle when Tom spoke. 

Standing there in a new dress shirt and sweater and close-fitting trousers, adjusting his sleeve with a bag full of purchases on his arm, Tom was handsome and bound to grow handsomer. Tom’s eyes flickered up to him, eyes shadowed, and for a moment was the perfect blend between that smouldering young villain and charming Head Boy. 

Girls had wanted to sleep with him. Boys had envied him. Harry wanted to throw him against the nearest surface and stuff him full of his cock until he screamed. 

*

When they arrived home, Harry’s wards rang in his head. He had to fight the instinctive flinch when he paused, rifled through his magic, and tried to determine the source of foreign magic. It was on Tom. Tom had brought something in. He must’ve stolen a magical item — and Harry could think of one magical item he’d be willing and able to steal. 

“What is it?” Tom said. 

“Nothing,” Harry said, and strode to catch up. 

They slotted Tom’s new clothing into the closet. Harry would wash them later, and Tom settled back on the bed to watch Harry organise purchases into drawers. All the clothing Tom had bought was rather standard. 

“There are a lot of ways to get people to respect you, you know,” Harry said. 

“I didn’t ask.”

“You did. You asked how I was familiar with so many people. It’s because I slew Voldemort, I was the youngest seeker in a decade, I won the Triwizard Tournament, I led the reconstruction of Hogwarts, and last year someone’s Obscurus possessed a building and ripped open London and I was the one to stop it.”

“How very heroic,” Tom said, with the faintest trace of a sneer. 

“Fear is the most volatile and conditional way to earn respect,” Harry said, and watched the resentment rise on Tom’s face because Tom knew that Harry was directly, unsubtly, attacking his beliefs. 

“Fear is _absolute_ ,” Tom said. His jaw clenched, and there was the slight jump of muscle in his cheek before the tension released. “Are you going to preach at me, kill me, or fuck me? All this hesitation is very unbecoming.” 

Harry turned around to see that Tom had settled back on the bed, against the headboard, his long legs set before him. Harry raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t think you were so— sluttish.”

Instantly a curse was sent flying his way. Harry caught it in his hand and crushed it. “I’m not _sluttish_ , you worm,” Tom said. 

Harry laughed, then, absurdly, because it reminded him so much of— instead there was _pain_ , his head, staggering— _Draco Malfoy, the blonde ponce, Slytherin, son of Lucius, Harry had testified to keep Lucius out of Azkaban to everyone’s shock just like he’d testified to keep Goyle out except Goyle had only landed a shortened sentence instead and killed himself after he got out since his parents and friends were all either dead or in Azkaban anyway_ — Harry pulled the whole weight of his Occlumency behind him, and _roared_ as he tore himself free. 

Tom had a stolen wand in his hands and it was pointed at Harry.

Harry, blood boiling, said, “ _Your_ turn.”

_Mrs Cole, screaming, a boy with a bludgeoned face, Myrtle’s head sprayed against the war, sirens_ — he ripped into Tom’s head with relentless fury, deeper, _deeper_ , he _knew_ these childish secrets already — _a young Tom sobbing in bed, the room, the empty room, pounding on the walls, it wasn’t two years, it was_ –

“ _STOP!_ ” Tom screamed, high and horridly real and filled with fear. The wild, inflamed, thought struck Harry that he could just keep going, he could turn boy inside-out, but he instead withdrew with all the suddenness of sliding a blade out of Tom’s insides. Tom was panting, hiccuping, quaking like a leaf. He looked at Harry as though he was not a wizard but a shadowed creature that walked with Dementors and dripped blackness. 

Harry approached Tom and sat on the edge of the bed and gently pried the stolen wand out of Tom’s hands. Numbly, he thought that he’d need to return that to its owner. 

Tom’s face was filled with such anguish that Harry couldn’t help but reach out and wipe the sweat off his forehead. Harry was supposed to feel pity, but he thought about how Tom had been intending to read his mind, incapacitate him with the stolen wand, and flee. 

“Should’ve just admitted you were sluttish,” Harry said lightly, even though his chest was a torrent of emotion. Then he leaned down and grabbed Tom by the chin and kissed until he devoured every last breath. Tom was gasping by the time Harry let him go. 

“I _loathe_ you,” Tom said. His eyes were burning with unshed angry tears.

“You don’t,” Harry said, boldly, and kissed him again, biting his lips hard enough to make Tom whimper, and covered Tom’s body with his own. He pressed Tom down into the mattress and reached into Tom’s trim new trousers to take his cock — soft, but steadily rising in Harry’s hand — and jerked him off until he came.

Tom’s body, released from all tension, splayed out against the covers. His lips were parted and he was staring at Harry with something unnameable in his eyes. 

*

Harry had only just sent away an apologetic owl to return the wand to its owner, citing a prankster that’d accidentally targeted the wrong person on a dare, when Tom came out from the guest bedroom, completely naked, and sat in Harry’s lap. Harry stared up at him, mystified, his cock already rising. 

Something in Tom’s haughty expression stopped him. “You didn’t really think you’d be able to get away with that,” Harry said. “You wanted me to get angry. I _told_ you that I wasn’t above hurting you if you tried to Legilimens me again.”

“I want more than your _hand_ ,” Tom said stuffily, instead of answering. He was trying to unbuckle Harry’s belt. Harry watched his deft fingers work.

Harry felt the need to say, “I knew you’d brought a wand in. As soon as we got home. I knew you’d gotten it.” I let you have it just to see what you would do.

Tom looked at him and brightened just slightly with something that Harry nearly dared to call a smile. It was as though he was proud that Harry had known. It proved that Harry was adept, that he was _worthy_. With that half-smile, he might as well have been a Veela. Harry grabbed him, yanked him down, and kissed him fiercely. Tom latched onto the back of the chair for balance while Harry violated his mouth with his tongue, and wiped his the mess with the back of his hand after they parted. 

They stared at each other for a while. Harry’s trouser-button had gotten undone and he was hard in his boxers. There was no question about Tom’s state— Harry could feel him pressed against their stomachs. 

He could see it, vaguely, the consistency. Tom’s behaviour was a win on two fronts. Either he would eventually overpower Harry or he would get the pounding of a lifetime. The first time, Tom had been trying to escape. He’d Apparated, then he’d tried to use Harry’s wand, but Harry had stopped him in both instances. The second time was when Harry had began to hope that it was merely Tom’s round-about way of asking for sex, since there had been no overt win for Tom when Harry had taken him against the table. 

But now they had reverted to step one. 

Tom was not scrawny, but he wasn't precisely lean. He was slim, and had the build of a young man with a slightly strenuous lifestyle. Harry’s hand explored him slowly, drifting up the flat plane of his stomach and flicking over his chest. Tom gasped above him, so Harry did it over and over until Tom was bucking in his lap and breathing hard. 

Harry had a warm, attractive, young wizard his hands. His dick held none of the compunctions his mind did. 

His other hand squeezed Tom’s arse, tightly, and that earned him a whole-body jolt. Harry revelled in the idea that Tom would lose his control over something so simple as a squeeze. He moved both hands down, kneading, spreading, and Tom began to writhe. He gasped and panted and grabbed at Harry’s shoulders, his eyes shut tightly. 

Harry wet his fingers and, slowly, _slowly_ , penetrated Tom. Wet heat enveloped his fingers and Harry immediately struck a punishing pace. Tom scrabbled for Harry’s cock, pulling him free, marvelling at his size before his eyes fluttered shut because Harry wasn’t holding back, fucking him as hard as he could with his fingers. Tom slumped forwards, utterly lost in the bliss of being finger-fucked. His own cock was drooling, bumping against Tom’s. He could feel his own heart rate begin to soar. 

Harry buried his face into Tom’s neck and growled, wanting to go faster, deeper, driven by some primal sort of need. He must’ve created an excessive amount of lube, because it was squelching and filling the living room with all sorts of wet sounds, coupled with Tom’s moaning and whining and panting like the slut he was. 

Tom was pulling back, trying to look at him. His flush was across his _nose_. He was blinking erratically fast and couldn’t help but close his eyes and moan whenever Harry buried his fingers into his arse and pumped. Tom clearly couldn’t close his mouth, either, because he couldn’t stop making those punched-out noise. 

“I’m not going to say this again,” Tom gasped. Harry turned all his attention to him. He shoved his fingers deep and crooked them, over and over, and Tom’s head fell back in a moan. 

“Say what?” Harry’s voice was far lower than he’d heard it before. 

Tom said, “That if I truly want you to stop, you will _know_.” Like the fear in his scream, before. 

It came together suddenly. Tom loved the idea of _power_. He loved the idea that Harry was powerful enough to take Tom whether Tom liked it or not, and that he was so irresistible that Harry would take him _no matter what_.

Harry stood from his chair. Instinctively, surprised, Tom latched onto his shoulders, and Harry hoisted him up with one arm and the other positioned his cock at Tom’s sopping entrance and _sunk_ into him. Tom’s insides were clenching around him and hot and tight and perfect, and Tom’s mouth was open in a perfect picture of surprise. Then he was clinging tightly and practically shouting because Harry grabbed him and dragged him up and down his cock, like he was some sort of toy, like he was weak and powerless and had just been snatched up by Harry and taken regardless of his own pleasure, all because Harry wanted to fuck his tight arse. 

Tom’s dick was sliding between Harry's still-clothed chest and Tom’s bare belly, but clearly Tom was too far gone to even consider touching himself. All he was doing was holding onto Harry while Harry pummelled him with every inch of his cock. Oh, Tom’s sweet virgin body was taking him so well, crying out like there was nothing he loved more than Harry deep inside him. 

Harry couldn’t bounce Tom for _that_ long without getting exhausted, so he threw Tom down onto the table, pushed his legs back to fold his whole sweet boy back like a jackknife and plunged his dick into Tom again. “I’m going to come in you _every day_ ,” Harry snarled. “I bought a plug when you were shopping, and it’s going to keep you wet and ready so I can fuck you _whenever I want_.”

The thought of that, of carelessly tugging Tom into his lap and tearing open his trousers, sliding out a plug and replacing it with his cock — fucking him while Tom was crying out and pretending not to love it — was too much. Harry pushed himself as deep as he could and then came, and he grabbed both of Tom’s arms and pinned them down so Tom couldn’t touch himself. 

“You’re going to come right now or not at all,” Harry said, and Tom clenched down and breathlessly yelled and shook through his orgasm. 

*

Harry dragged Tom into the shower after, since they were both sweating messes, and under the spray he told Tom to put his hands up against the wall. “If you think I’m letting you at me _again_ , you’re wrong,” Tom sneered, so Harry grabbed him and tried to shove him against the wall himself. Tom squirmed, spat, but as soon as Harry got his hands on a nipple and his dick, he jerked back and moaned. 

From there, it was easy. Tom was arching his back and Harry slid himself in as if he fit there. He pounded Tom from behind, watching the way that Tom tried hold back his embarrassing moaning and the way that his arse bounced each time Harry’s hips rammed into him. It wasn’t long until they came and Tom slumped, exhausted. Harry washed him down, his hair and his shoulders and his hips and — both their cocks gave spent twitches of interest when he washed around Tom’s arse — his lithe legs and eventually they left the shower. 

Harry made good on his promise. Still wet and naked from his shower, he retrieved the plug that he’d bought and then sunk it into Tom. Tom made a weak noise as it pressed against the resistance and suddenly was past the ring, snug inside him, only the flared base visible. 

Okay. Now, utterly wrung out from their orgasms, they slumped into the same bed and fell asleep.

*

In the middle of the night, he came to awareness at the sensation Tom trying to get up. As soon as he registered it, the awareness, the moment of consciousness at the hour when nothing was supposed to be awake, his hand darted out and grabbed Tom by the wrist. 

“You’re not going,” Harry said, suddenly very lucid. You’re not going back to the cupboard. 

Silence answered him. Tom’s expression was hidden by the darkness, but Harry could feel how tense he was. 

Harry said, “I’ve been wondering how you’d thought about it this whole time. You must’ve hated that house and picked one corner that was more bearable than the rest. But it’s still the a part of the damn house,” He was getting more worked up than he’d initially intended to be, thinking about his own cupboard, “And the rest of it, too— between detesting your own power because you’d been caged for it and trapped _by_ it–“ just like him, his stupid scar, the stupid prophecy that both gave him power and caged him in.

Tom said, darkly, “Have you ever hated something, or someone, so viciously that you would give anything to remove them from your life? A bully? A tormentor?”

Harry had. Several, in fact. 

“You destroy them,” Tom hissed. "You have to find the power to remove them. And I _will_.”

“I had bullies,” Harry said. “I forgave them.”

“Because you were too _weak_ to eliminate them.”

Harry took a deep breath. “I had him at my wandpoint. I could’ve ruined his life, but I didn’t, because it’s never about your bully, it’s about _you_. Your enemy is your _fear_. Your bully is its source — and even if you eliminate him, that fear is going to come back from someone or something else. When you forgive them, you eliminate that fear — forever.”

The silence that met him was not promising. 

Tom began to pull away.

“If you keep sleeping in the bloody cupboard, how are you _ever_ going to get out of that house?!”

He could hear Tom, breathing in the dark, loud in the wake of Harry’s raised voice. “This conversation did not happen,” he said.

Harry tried to yank him back, except Tom’s foot planted into his stomach and knocked the breath out of him and weakened his grip just enough for him to slip away. Tom was about to leave when the door slammed shut and the dresser hopped in front of it. This was _Harry’s_ house, damnit. 

“Tom,” Harry said. 

“I may have allowed you to put your cock in me, but I’m not _yours_. Move your furniture before I obliterate it.”

“Take out the plug.” 

Tom was just going to blast the door to smithereens. Harry nearly had time to regret making the gamble before he heard Tom’s stifled moan, and a small, wet, noise as the plug was removed. 

The dresser hopped back to its original place. 

Harry gathered his strength. Then he wrapped a hand around himself and began jerking, trying to reach hardness again; the sound of it was obvious. “You can walk out that door, or you can come back here. One or the other, Tom.”

And then he had a lapful of Tom, swearing. "You imbecile,” he said, just as he sank down onto Harry’s cock. He was still as wet and tight as before, and they groaned as Harry shifted and repositioned them, settling against the headboard, wrapping an arm around Tom’s chest. 

“Stay here,” Harry said, and Tom clenched around him tightly, and did. 

*

Harry made eggs in the morning. He scrambled them with a bit of milk to make them lighter and fluffier. Tom was at the table, reading the morning paper. The owls had brought in a heap of reports and papers this morning. Harry’s laptop was sitting at the table because he was the type of person to do his work at the table, sipping his tea and taking his time. 

Tom was looking at the Ministry report on the table. Harry had read it already and deemed it acceptable for Tom to see. “The only thing they found were rumours?” Tom said. “How absolutely predictable.”

“His ideals didn’t die with him," Harry said. “Especially with… the growing public acceptable of Muggleborn and half-blood wizards, opinions are becoming more polarised. Grindelwald’s adherents are still trying to establish a foothold here.” He took the pan off the stovetop and walked over to the table, where the headlines of the Daily Prophet were announcing the newest lineup for the Falmouth Falcons. Their Beater was a Muggleborn. “Apparently they’re very vocal in the United States and that influence is spreading.”

“I am his Nagini,” Tom said, “in the way that I will die for being his horcrux.”

Harry said nothing. He had told Robards that he’d take care of it. He poured them both some tea. 

“You survived. How did you?” Tom said. 

“I had the bond of blood.”

“I’ve never heard of that.”

“When you,” Harry said, and paused. “When you love someone so dearly and you choose to give your life up for them, they’re protected — from everything.”

“You want to say that something so trivial as _love_ kept you from the Killing Curse?”

“My mother gave her life for me."

“It had something to do with the Hallows, didn’t it?”

“No,” Harry said. 

“Then it was my blood.”

“No,” Harry said, and clutched the handle of his mug more tightly. 

“The shared wand cores.”

“No. Love is— you underestimate it, Tom. It _is_ our reason to survive. The loss of loved ones, the loss of love itself… above all fear, above all hate — love is — love is why we survive.”

“That sounds like rubbish,” Tom said. 

“To be some else’s world entire —" Harry said, “—we’re just like that, as human beings, or the world would never turn. If we were never loved, we’d never leave our mark anywhere, and no one would remember us because no one would _want_ to remember us. There’s death and there’s life and love is what spans it beyond it.”

“Death… is the end of everything,” Tom said, but quietly.

*

Harry, 

I think you should read these. The second one’s a Muggle study conducted in 1998 in response to a British interrogation method used on prisoners of war. 

Take care,

Hermione.

Attached 1/2: 

SPELL FILE 9022SST 

Date of submission: 14/7/04

Creator: Unknown

Spell incantation: Unnamed; can silent-cast by experienced practitioner with stasis focus. 

Classification: Charm/Curse

Effect of spell: The body has the effect of locking in stasis until the enchantment is unravelled. Physical metabolism slows to 1:50–1000 of original rate. Mental status remains unimpeded, although unresponsiveness of physical mechanisms prevents any use of sight, smell, taste, hearing, physical touch, or magic casting, resembling total sensory deprivation.

Side-effects and Warnings: Spell, if cast while target’s eyes or mouth are open, risks permanent damage. Spell should not be maintained for over a 12 hours in violation of the United Wizards Committee on Torture. 

Notes: Useful in short durations for meditative therapy or by Mediwizards when preservation of critical patient is necessary […]

Attached 2/2:

Sensory Deprivation: Clinical Aspects 

Abstract 

Sensory deprivation is an area in psychology and psychiatry familiar to certain forms of literature. Autobiographical reports from explorers, sailors, and astronauts have indicated gross cognitive abnormalities such as hallucinations, delusions, disorientations, and anxiety can occur in persons that are isolated for an extended period of time. This study of sensory deprivation was carried out […]

*

That night, Harry was sweet to Tom. Tom had been in the armchair, reading a history tome. Harry had bought him a great deal of books in the past week. He’d let Tom have whatever books he’d wanted — even a tome that described some aspects of Dark magic, particularly horcruxes. It was certain that Tom was practising Dark magic, but Harry told himself that Tom’s expiry date was coming soon, anyway, and that he knew how to defeat even the strongest Dark magic that Tom could throw at him. More importantly, keeping the books away would just make Tom resent him. 

Harry had pushed the book down, brushed a curl behind his ear, and, despite Tom’s surprise, kissed him. Tom tried to turn it vigorous and hungry, but Harry maintained the slow, soft, pace. Tom yanked some of his hair and only received a smile against his mouth. 

He led Tom to the guest— Tom’s — bedroom. He spread Tom out against the covers and kissed every inch of him, up his pale legs and the soft swell of his thighs, the concave expanse of his belly, the slight swell of his pectorals, the definition in his arms and each knuckle on his hand. He kissed every part that he could reach, and kissed his lips even when he removed the plug and sunk himself into Tom’s perfect heat. He nestled himself in deep and did not move and held Tom in place, savouring the feeling and the twitches and the soft moans whenever Tom tried to shift. 

“Hurry up,” Tom said, squirming and sending sparks of pleasure skittering up Harry’s spine. 

Harry just wanted to look at him when he was like this. His blush filled his cheeks and crept across his nose. His eyes were wide and dark and his hair was tousled.No matter how many times they fucked, Tom was always sensitive. A simple touch to the chest or his arse could have his whole body jerking. 

Harry’s every inch withdrew, then pressed in again with deliberate slowness, all the way until he was buried to the hilt. Tom was shaking in his arms. When he was inside, he began kissing Tom’s chest and throat again. 

“What’s wrong with you today?” Tom said, trying to ride his cock and scrunching his face up when Harry stilled his hips. 

Tom was skittish. Hearing it aloud — _I know you lied, you weren’t in there for two years, you spent the another fifty-nine in your head, that’s why you can just sit in the chair and look at nothing and why you know what I mean when I tell you to relish just being alive_ — would make him run, so Harry said nothing, but kissed him instead. 

*

They’d had unearthed a spy in the Ministry today, and, from there, uprooted an entire network of Grindelwald’s sympathisers. Upon discovery, the operation had withdrawn to where _they were hiding Grindelwald_. Robards told him that they’d have Grindelwald’s location by tomorrow, once the large-scale tracking ritual was finished. 

Harry told Robards that he hadn't killed the boy, the Horcrux, yet. Robards had sat down for a long moment and said that it was alright. Let them ensure that they’d actually found Grindelwald first. They’d figure it out from there. 

Harry arrived home, tossed his travelling cloak over the couch and startled Tom. “Come,” Harry said. 

“To where?”

“Hogwarts.”

He took Tom’s arm and walked outside and Apparated. 

Hogwarts was every image of the distant, glorious castle on the hill. It was alight and its turrets were backlit by the sky. Its familiarity was unmistakable. Harry saw how Tom couldn’t take his eyes away from it. The lake lapped at the shores and Harry pointed out where the White Tomb lay, serene, undisturbed, the final resting place of Albus Dumbledore. Students forever would pay their respects at it. Tom did not reply to him. For a moment Harry thought he saw ashes and the curl of smoke near the tomb and thought of Fawkes, but the moment passed and there was no immortal creature in sight. 

Unspeaking, he walked Tom to the edge of the Forbidden Forest and then into it, holding his wrist tightly so he wouldn’t stumble on the numerous gnarled roots that littered the forest floor. Harry could find this location in his sleep, and had, many times. It was a small clearing, flanked by enormous yew trees, and Harry stood there for a moment, just breathing, taking it in. There was no sense of magic here anymore. 

“Why are we here?” Tom said. 

“This is where I came to die, once. It's where you killed me and destroyed your own horcrux.”

Tom tensed, ready to flee. Harry did not let go of him, though he thought that Tom could’ve escaped now, if he’d tried. “And?” Tom asked instead, tightly. 

“This is where I buried you,” Harry said. 

“You buried me,” he repeated.

“On my own,” Harry said. He let go of Tom’s wrist. “No one cared to find out, anyway. No one cared about you after you were dead.” 

There was no tombstone or marker. Harry simply levelled his wand between the two enormous yew trees and the ground unceremoniously turned over. The smell was fetid. Harry strode over to it. 

Tom was silent. He’d followed Harry. 

Harry knelt, and when he stood, he was holding another wand that he put into his robes beside his own one. Tom barely glanced at it. He was looking into the open grave. Harry waited for him to say something, or react. 

Eventually Tom’s face twisted with agony and he strode away to the edge of the clearing to stand there and stare into the trees. Harry did not follow him, but he could see through the uppermost, thinnest, branches, the silhouette of the Astronomy Tower and another high spire that belonged to Hogwarts, distant, alight, and forever unreachable to Tom. 

*

Harry left at dawn, when Tom was still sleeping. He took both wands with him as he left and Apparated to the Ministry. Robards was there to brief him. Ron had gathered their team already, and looking over, Harry saw the secondary and tertiary Auror teams preparing. A group of Mediwizards were also being briefed. Their expressions were grave.

“We confirmed Grindelwald’s there," Ron said. “Hermione suggested — can you believe it — Muggle _drones_ , and they bloody worked.” Harry knew this, because Hermione had written to him rather extensively on her passion to use Muggle technology to bring in Anti-Muggle protestors. “The building’s on lockdown and they’ve got heavy patrols outside. We were thinking of coming in around the back. The sides have been deforested for visibility, so it’s up to us forcing our way in.“ 

Harry agreed, suggested minor changed, briefed their team, and then portkeys were handed out. His heart was very level and very steady in his chest. The ground jerked beneath his feet, and then they were in an unfamiliar forest. Immediately they fanned out and Harry gestured north. Ron gave him the clear. 

When they did approach the house, however, one of Harry’s Aurors cried out and suddenly everything dissolved into the flash of spells. Wizards burst from the property towards them, unfamiliar faces, flinging Unforgivables and curses that screamed like arrows when they whizzed past. The reason for the cry quickly became clear: Inferi burst from the ground in a tidal wave. They were pouring from all around the house, and in the flashes of light, Harry could see Robards trying to fend off the undead, west-side. It was obvious that they had underestimated Grindelwald’s support. 

Harry passed downed Aurors, and slipped into bloody dirt. Mediwizards rushed to aid the fallen, but they were being surrounded by wailing Inferi. At the same time their attackers began to abruptly pull away, scattering into the woods. Harry sent a galloping stag of fire to his Aurors aid, glanced back at Ron — they had an established and trusted dynamic, and Ron met his eyes and immediately understood — and then Harry went racing towards the house on the hill, alone. 

Lights were flashing inside the house. The whole thing seemed to groan and buckle. Harry’s searching charm dashed ahead of him, scanning the earth, but then the ground exploded under his feet and for a moment Harry couldn’t see because he was tumbling through the air. He smashed his head hard but got to his feet immediately, staggering, and heard something roar overhead. He looked up and saw a dark shape against the sky. He immediately thought _dragon_ but was wrong, because shrieking things began to fall from the shape, the _plane_. When they landed it was with an enormous noise and they carpeted the earth with fire. Harry, not knowing whether this was their aid, because the Inferi were screaming, burning, or something else, blasted the back door of the house open and was inside.

He barely took a step inside before a flash of light caught him and ignited his veins, aflame, the excruciating fist of the Cruciatus curse squeezing his insides, sending him to the floor. He gasped for air, drowning, and rolled just as the upper floor came down on him and his vision dissolved into rubble and dust. Harry caught the wizard with a Full-Body bind, heard him hit the ground, and stumbled out into the hallway. 

Glass glistened all over the floor and Harry cast a cursory shield as he crossed it. Portraits were howling on the walls. He came to a stairwell that led both up and down and knew that Grindelwald would’ve been on the highest floor, so he took the stairs down because if there were any prisoners in the cellar, he needed to free them first. 

The wooden stairs gave way to a door that gave way to stone and his voice was claustrophobic in his ears as he rushed down. He blasted open the lower door and illuminated the room to see a wizard trussed up, against the floor, unconscious. Harry searched the cellar, golden light cast against the stones, and found nothing else, so he levitated him immediately and raced back up the stairs. He came back the way he’d initially entered, heartbeat in his throat, and as he rounded the corner to take the wizard outside, he caught a glimpse of the face of the wizard he’d freed from the cellar. That was undeniably _Grindelwald._

Harry dropped him in his shock. A crunch of glass had him whirling around to see at least five more wizards had entered the hallway and were pelting Harry with so many spells that they were obliterating the walls around him as they glanced off his shield. Harry’s shield was wavering; his whole wand-hand shaking with exhaustion and injury, and he backed into a room — a kitchen, he realised — to try to funnel them in. They came. Avada Kedavra missed him by a hair and Harry was alight with the primal need to survive. The room was exploding around him, crashing, and he had time to think that this was all a _trap_ because somehow, for some reason, Grindelwald wasn’t important to these wizards. He remembered— remembered one of his visions — when Voldemort had killed Grindelwald — up in his cell in Nurmengard— _remorse_ , Grindelwald had said—

Harry felled a wizard by reflecting a curse that severed his head from his neck and he saw—

“ _Tom!”_ Harry screamed, because that was _Tom_ —

The next curse caught Harry off-guard and sent him flying against the cabinets. Blood was everywhere. Harry only just reflected the next curse, trying to get up, why was Tom here, why on _Earth_ —

Tom, shaking Grindelwald, demanding something, demanding remorse, get this Horcrux out of me how dare you how dare you, but at the sound of his name, he’d looked up and seen Harry, and got to his feet because Harry was surrounded by so many enemies and flagging—

And green light filled the room. Harry did not hear the incantation, but he _knew_ it was the Killing Curse. He had heard it so many times, heard the call of death, and knew unmistakably that this was death now. It hit Tom square in the back and crawled over his skin. There was no instant even for shock. The light in his eyes went dark and he fell, limp.

Harry screamed and sent a spear of metal through the chest of the wizard that’d shot the Killing Curse but felt nothing except the roar in his blood. He raised his wand just as the house above him _exploded_ — this was the trap, he realised, the whole fucking house had been rigged— just as he called down for the heavens to open up and give the fire to raze this god-forsaken building to the earth because _Tom was dead_ , and the shockwave of the blast hit him like a thousand-tonne crushing weight and all the bones in his body shattered and it all went dark.

*

Someone was singing. 

Harry woke and saw a blurred world. There was rubble everywhere. Someone was there. Someone, something, was opposite him. It was hard to look at because it was glowing, aflame, red and gold and shifting with fire. Everything in Harry was agony. He could hear shouting. The phoenix — Fawkes, he realised — was standing over someone, weeping, and at the approach of more footsteps and yelling, Fawkes raised his head and launched himself into the air. Harry saw embers fall as he soared higher and higher. 

He could see the sky, he realised. What had been grass was utterly scorched and cracked. The house was not standing anymore. Inferi corpses made the whole place stink. Mediwizards were the ones shouting. 

The body that Fawkes had been crying over had sat up. Harry realised this distantly. His mind was still a haze of red fog. Harry couldn’t move. He was alive, but everything in him was broken, and his magic was stubbornly holding him together. 

The person came closer. It was Tom. Tom very carefully reached into Harry’s burnt robes, drew out their wands, and took one.

It was _Tom_. The realisation fully formed in his head and left him bereft suddenly of all breath. But Tom had died. He’d been hit by the Killing Curse. Unless— Fawkes? Had he shed tears for Tom?

Tom was looking at him. It was hard to focus on his face. Harry couldn’t move even his hand to wipe away the blood that coated him. If Tom wanted to leave, now was the time. He had his wand. He, presumably, had the horcrux destroyed too. He was alive and more free than he had ever been. This was the moment — the moment that Tom had been pushing in all their time together. Tom had always been vying to be free, hadn’t he? He played it off as wanted to incite Harry into- into doing _things_ to him, but the truth was that he was trying to escape. Now was the moment, the watershed, for Tom to prove it. 

But. Pheonixes were immortal and had seen the turn of centuries and all the wisdom that came with time. They came only to those who were as loyal, as devoted. They had never misjudged a character.

“Get up, won’t you? We can’t have you catching that _train_ ,” Tom said, instead. When Harry didn’t respond, still processing what Tom had said, Tom shouted for a Mediwizard, and then leant down, wetting the edge of his robes and wiping Harry face. 

“You look terrible like this,” Tom said, soft and conspiratorial, and knelt there with him, sharing the proximity and the sensation of being alive and breathing the same air, until help arrived. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's a wrap!
> 
>  ~~i’m sorry to say that it’s unlikely I'll write (or read) more stories for this pairing!~~ this really was just a tribute to the pairing that was my first, and as much as I enjoy Tom/Harry, some of their tropes make me wanna jettison myself out of a five-storey window and into a wood chipper.
> 
> edit: jk im a liar
> 
> if you ever want hear me gripe abt it or talk about _Ham_ , lmk and i’ll slid into your dms or something ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 
> 
> Anyways, thanks for stickin’ around!


End file.
